SaskPower's rates went up 3.9% this past February. Another 3.9% increase is filed for next February, but that number isn't the one to plan around. The same regulator that just confirmed the first increase is already saying the second one is likely to land higher, somewhere between 5.4% and 6.4%.
What Changed In February
Residential bills went up about $5 a month starting February 1, and farm accounts about $11. That's on top of a standard residential energy charge that now sits at 15.476 cents per kWh, plus a $31.16 base charge, putting a household using 1,000 kWh a month somewhere in the high 18 cent range.
Farm accounts on three-phase power are looking at more than that $11 average, though. The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses has pointed out those accounts are facing hundreds of dollars a year in added cost, a steeper number than the illustration SaskPower uses.
Why the Panel Isn't Confirming the Second One
The panel reviewing SaskPower's books stopped short of confirming the 2027 increase, warning it could land 1.5 to 2.5 percentage points above the 3.9% SaskPower requested.
Much of that gap traces back to one project. SaskPower's operating loss forecast for this year just moved from $147 million to $187 million, and a real piece of that shortfall is tied to timing on Bell's $1.7 billion, 300 megawatt data centre near Regina, which SaskPower is building the transmission lines to serve. That project is expected to start drawing power, and paying for it, sometime in 2027. Land on schedule, and it helps close the gap. Slip, or come in smaller than planned, and Saskatchewan ratepayers are the ones left covering the difference. The panel wants updated numbers from SaskPower by November 2 before it will settle on an actual 2027 figure.
What This Means For Installers
3.9% has been the number everyone's repeating, but the panel itself doesn't think it'll hold. So it looks like anyone building a payback comparison around next year's rate should be leaning closer to 5% than 3.9%, not what's sitting on SaskPower's own page, especially for agricultural and commercial accounts where the real number per account already runs past the residential average.
Net metering hasn't moved through any of this. SaskPower's 100 kW self-generation cap and its credit rate are unchanged, so that side of the math still holds steady while the retail rate keeps shifting underneath it.
SaskPower's November filing is what actually settles this. Installers pricing anything past February 2027 should treat that date as the one that matters, not the panel's meeting in August.